"You can't build security on evil", said Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, borrowing his rhetoric from the administration he hopes to help indicte.
He was testifying in front of the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.
He detailed the logic of "plausible deniability" after the CIA and MI6 received intelligence from allies in the "war on terror" that practice torture.
Alarmed by the information he had personally gathered from victims of torture in Uzbekistan, the ambassador complained about the use of such intelligence - bad intelligence, he adds. He was summoned back to London, where he was informed this was legal - provided the British did not do the torturing themselves, or requested that a specific individual be tortured.
This operating principle of "don't ask, don't tell" permits denials, such as those voiced by State secretary Condoleezza Rice, questionned by the European Union about the policies of "extraordinary renditions" and the existence of secret CIA prisons outside of the United States.
Asked about the US delivering prisoners to be interrogated in Uzbekistan, Craig Murray stated that he was only aware of ethnic Uzbeks "rendered" to the local authorities during his tenure in the country.
Other witnesses at these final hearings included former Abu Ghraib commander Janis Karpinski, now retired from the Army, and Barbara Olshansky, from the Center for Constitutional Rights. They dissected the public and secret policies that instituted a regime of detention and torture that violates national and international law, including the Geneva Conventions.
The International Commission, organised by "people of conscience" with the stated goal to "fuel and frame" a necessary discussion, does not limit the scope of its inquiry to war crimes and human rights violations in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the "war on terror". It also charges the Bush administration with crime and violations in reference to its actions on global warming, reproductive rights, and its response to huricane Katrina.
He was testifying in front of the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.
He detailed the logic of "plausible deniability" after the CIA and MI6 received intelligence from allies in the "war on terror" that practice torture.
Alarmed by the information he had personally gathered from victims of torture in Uzbekistan, the ambassador complained about the use of such intelligence - bad intelligence, he adds. He was summoned back to London, where he was informed this was legal - provided the British did not do the torturing themselves, or requested that a specific individual be tortured.
This operating principle of "don't ask, don't tell" permits denials, such as those voiced by State secretary Condoleezza Rice, questionned by the European Union about the policies of "extraordinary renditions" and the existence of secret CIA prisons outside of the United States.
Asked about the US delivering prisoners to be interrogated in Uzbekistan, Craig Murray stated that he was only aware of ethnic Uzbeks "rendered" to the local authorities during his tenure in the country.
Other witnesses at these final hearings included former Abu Ghraib commander Janis Karpinski, now retired from the Army, and Barbara Olshansky, from the Center for Constitutional Rights. They dissected the public and secret policies that instituted a regime of detention and torture that violates national and international law, including the Geneva Conventions.
The International Commission, organised by "people of conscience" with the stated goal to "fuel and frame" a necessary discussion, does not limit the scope of its inquiry to war crimes and human rights violations in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the "war on terror". It also charges the Bush administration with crime and violations in reference to its actions on global warming, reproductive rights, and its response to huricane Katrina.
posted by Eloise Sand at 12:12 AM
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